2010 Cadillac Escalade Premium Awd Loaded on 2040-cars

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Cadillac plans new branding campaign to go with new products

Cadillac's new leader says the GM luxury brand now has "thousands of people" working on its behalf back at its soon-to-be new headquarters in the Detroit suburb of Warren, with a new branding campaign under development and plans to fix longstanding quality issues. Cadillac President Steve Carlisle granted an interview with the Detroit Free Press in which he said he'll unveil a new strategy to redefine the luxury brand, which he's calling a "master brand," in the first quarter of 2019. "Cadillac has its own values — boldness, optimism, innovation, sophistication — that will reflect in the master brand," Carlisle told the outlet. The challenge is "how to bring those to life." He added that Caddy won't be defining itself simply as a viable option to gold-standard Germany luxury cars. "We're targeting customers versus competitors. Cadillac has to have its own persona and not be defined by where other brands are and are not. It has to have its own definition and that's what we're reflecting in our master brand." Carlisle, who was promoted to lead Cadillac in April, put his first stamp on Cadillac last month when the brand announced it will move its headquarters back to Warren, Mich., across the street from GM's massive Tech Center, after more than three years in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood. He said its Cadillac House showroom, a ground-floor space used to display models and stage events with partners, will remain open "for the time being" and that the brand will use what it learned well outside of its Detroit auto-industry bubble to move the brand forward. He'll have his work cut out for him. Cadillac plans to launch a new or redesigned vehicle every six months for the next three years, and Carlisle said he wants the brand to be GM's technology leader, the first to deploy self-driving and electric-vehicle technology of GM's stable of brands. Yet the brand just ranked second-from-last in Consumer Reports' new reliability survey for 2018. Jon Linkov, deputy auto editor for CR, said the brand suffered for widespread complaints about its Cadillac User Experience infotainment system, with owners reporting frequent crashes, frozen screens and problems with voice control. "Most of (the complaints) really ran through the CUE system being a major culprit for Cadillacs," Linkov said. Through September, Cadillac's year-to-date sales had dipped a half a percentage point from the first nine months of 2017 to 113,240 units.

Best and Worst GM Cars

Oh yes, because we just love receiving angry letters from devoted Pontiac Grand Am enthusiasts, we have decided to go there. Based on a heated group Slack conversation, the topic came up about the best and worst GM cars. First of all time, and then those currently on sale, and then just mostly a rambling discussion of Oldsmobiles our parents and grandparents owned (or engineered). Eventually, three of us made the video above. Like it? Maybe we can make more. Many awesome GM cars are definitely going unmentioned here, so please let us know your bests and worsts in the comments below. Mostly, it's important to note that this post largely exists as a vehicle for delivering the above video that dives far deeper into GM's greatest hits and biggest flops, specifically those from the 1980s and 1990s. What you'll find below is a collection of our editors identifying a best current and best-of-all-time choice, plus a worst current and worst-of-all-time choice. Comprehensive it is not, but again, comments. -Senior Editor James Riswick Best Current GM Vehicle Chevrolet Corvette We were flying by the seats of our pants a bit in this first outing and my notes were similarly extemporaneous. When it came time to tie it all together on camera, I failed spectacularly. Thank the maker for text, because this gives me the opportunity to perhaps slightly better explain my convoluted reasoning. I chose the C8 Corvette because it's simply overwhelmingly good, and it's merely the baseline from which this generation of Corvette will be expanded.  While the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing (more on that in a minute) is an amazing snapshot of GM's current performance standing and its little sibling so enraptured me that I went out and bought one, their existence is fleeting. Corvette will live on; forced-induction Cadillac sport sedans, not so much. So while all three are amazing machines when viewed in a vacuum, the Corvette stands above them as both a reflection of GM's current performance credentials and a signpost of what is to come. So, given the choice between the C8 and the 5V-Blackwing right now, I'd choose the C8. In 10 years, when the Blackwing is no longer in production and Corvette is in its 9th generation? Well, that might be a different story. Now, just pretend I said something even remotely that coherent when we get to the part of the video where I try to make an argument for the 5-V Blackwing as best GM car I've ever driven. Or just laugh at me while I ramble incoherently.

2021 Cadillac Escalade Onyx package adds monochrome logos

The 2016 Cadillac Escala concept showed off a number of features never seen on a Cadillac, one of them being a redesigned, entirely silver, untextured logo. Cadillac had been putting all-silver versions of its crest on the fenders of some of its vehicles, but those bore patterned silver inserts where the yellow, black, red, and blue would have appeared on the standard mark. The Escala logo, on top of being squatter and wider, displayed silver blanks where the colors went. Cadillac Society has found out a similar treatment is on the way for the 2021 Escalade as part of a new Onyx package. This time, instead of being brightwork, a Cadillac spokesperson told CS the logos are "more grey versus [the] silver/chrome [on the fenders]." And for the first time on a Cadillac on the showroom floor, these monochrome badges will appear on the grille and tailgate. Buyers can add a Sport Edition package to the current Escalade, dressing almost all the brightwork grille in gloss black and bolting on a set of 22-inch Midnight Silver wheels. The Cadillac logos, however, stay in color, and the Escalade lettering stays in chrome. That changes with the Onyx package, those gray monochrome crests joined by Escalade lettering in gloss black, plus 22-inch, 12-spoke wheels in high gloss black, and a similar blackout of all the other brightwork as found on the Sport Edition package. The Sport Edition is only available on three of the eight possible colors; a limited color selection could hold true for the Onyx package as well. Branding could get even more interesting when the crest's animated illumination shows up on the Lyriq electric crossover.  The 2021 Escalade will move to the new forked trim strategy, Premium Luxury on one side, Sport on the other, the Onyx package only available on the Sport side. For shoppers who want to go the other way, we're sure the new Escalade will offer something equivalent to the current Radiant Package that makes any Escalade even more impossible to miss on a sunny day. Related Video: